Quoting SA:
"In the early months of the 2008 primaries, John Edwards concluded that single-payer was politically valuable enough that pandering to its supporters (recall that he pointedly stressed that his public option could lead naturally to single payer) would pay off." A few, separate points:
a) That politicians support public insurance may not be evidence of sensitivity on their part to populism--the business community as a whole, apart from the insurance industry itself, are in favor because it would potentially lower there costs and reduce the motivation for workers to engage in union action and so on.
b) It is not clear how the Public Option was any nearer single payer than existing Medicare/Medicade--it just amounted to a slight bureaucratic adjustment.
c) Public insurance--single payer--itself is only a slight step in the direction of public healthcare, such as the UK NHS (under assault, of course, by New Labor). A fact that puts in perspective just how flagrantly right wing even the "left" is in the is country.
Finally, I couldn't agree with the title more--liberal Dems are unless, all the more so for their smugness.
Peter Ward pontificatingwithoutalicense.wordpress.com
> Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:58:51 -0400
> From: s11131978 at gmail.com
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] why liberal Dems are absolutely useless or worse
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > One of the reasons the right has been so successful is that they don't
> > mind driving the train off the rails, or threatening to. I admire
> > their maximalism in defense of their principles.
>
> I do too. But right-wing politicians feel the same pressure that Dennis
> Kucinich does not to make things "worse" (from their constituents' point
> of view) out of concern for abstract principle. Case in point was the
> Vietnam war, where Goldwater &c swallowed huge amounts of very
> objectionable stuff from Nixon because the alternative, as they saw it,
> was a bug-out in Vietnam. William Rusher denounced them for their
> spinelessness but eight years later their dawn arrived.
>
> > Liberal Democrats lack the same instinct. So, yeah, kill the fucking
> > thing. It sucks.
>
> Boy, that's easy for you to say. All you have to do is come up with
> arguments on an email list or a newsletter. You don't have to be the one
> to take a vote that leaves you forever open to the justifiable charge
> that you willingly deprived millions of people health insurance. And I
> know all the counter-arguments.
>
> > An impressive list of reasons why this bill sucks and should fail:
> >
> > <http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/03/19/fact-sheet-the-truth-about-the-health-care-bill/>.
>
>
> I've long thought it's unfortunate that FDL is, apparently, the leading
> voice of opposition to the bill from the left. I don't find their
> arguments all that impressive. I think they're usually full of holes and
> I have to confess I don't really trust them to get their facts right. In
> this list they don't cite any sources or define any of their terms.
>
> One point that should be remembered is that requiring people to pay up
> to 8% of their income could perhaps end up being a serious hardship for
> some, but that argument might apply equally to PNHP's single payer plan,
> which has a 7% payroll tax (ostensibly paid by the employer) plus a 2%
> income tax. Obviously there's no moral equivalence here, since the PNHP
> plan is infinitely more rational and humane and offers better insurance.
> But the financial hardship argument seems like a desperate attempt to
> portray this as taking something away from people when in fact it gives
> them something (them and the inscos, of course), however needlessly shoddy.
>
> If you look in the archives you'll see I said a few months ago I hoped
> the bill would die. I meant that. But that was just after Scott Brown's
> election, when it looked like the bill would collapse from its
> overwhelming lack of support from anywhere on the political spectrum. If
> that had happened, "we" could plausibly claim afterward that a key
> ingredient that killed it was its failure to generate any real
> enthusiasm on the left, due to its crappiness. The appropriate lesson to
> draw would be clear.
>
> But now is different. They've already lined up all the votes they need
> to pass it, unless the progressives vote no. To demand that Dennis
> Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney make themselves the agents who
> singlehandedly killed a bill to give 30 million people health insurance
> is ridiculous. It's an expression of frustration, not a serious
> political calculation. The fallout would be so tremendous I would be
> shocked if the nay-voting progs didn't face centrist primary challengers
> who pandered to people without health insurance: "Joe Prog claims to be
> a progressive, but then he voted to deny you insurance out of some
> eccentric left-wing obsession."
>
> Obama's victory laps will be nauseating to watch, but there's no reason
> to give up. The day the bill passes should be the beginning of a long
> campaign to point out how much it sucks and why we need single payer.
>
> I'm not as depressed about this as others are. Paradoxically, the last
> two years have actually shown how unexpectedly strong the single payer
> forces are. In the early months of the 2008 primaries, John Edwards
> concluded that single-payer was politically valuable enough that
> pandering to its supporters (recall that he pointedly stressed that his
> public option could lead naturally to single payer) would pay off. Obama
> and Clinton thought he was right and were forced to adopt Edwards' plan,
> including the famous public option. Then, amazingly, throughout the long
> debate, the public option - a sort of single-payer proxy in many
> people's minds - became this hot-button, emotional rallying cry for
> liberals. Fine, ridicule it, but nothing like that had happened in the
> previous 15 years. The main national single-payer action coalition
> (Health-Care Now) - very smart, dedicated people - said on a recent
> conference call with their local activists that this whole health care
> debate generated more fresh interest in and support for single payer
> than they had ever seen. All those Salon-reading pwogs who were barely
> aware of single payer three years ago now consider themselves die-hard
> single payer supporters.
>
> Ok, so this shitty bill passes. So what? On Day 2, start highlighting
> how bad it is. When the mandate kicks in, find people who can't afford
> to pay and publicize them. When the subsidies start, find people who get
> sick and still go bankrupt despite being "insured" and publicize them.
> Point out how much the drug companies are still ripping people off. Play
> up the nefarious consequences of Obama's secret deals with Pharma and
> the hospital groups.
>
> Once the bill passes, the moral blackmail that the pro-Obama camp is
> currently able to wield - support our bill or millions suffer -
> disappears and suddenly it will be *they* who have to explain why,
> despite abundant evidence of the bill's crappiness, they still refuse to
> support single payer.
>
> SA
>
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